Domestic Cold War: Hidden Communists and their ties to sexuality

During the Cold War, the “Lavender Scare” was when anyone who was a suspected homosexual, were found, detained, and dismissed from any government, political, or military job (Friedman). While the “Lavender Scare” was about finding homosexuals in the government and the “Red Scare” was about finding communists, they both compared how a homosexual or communist was a ‘slave’ to either their sexual urges or their communist master (Friedman). There were other parallels made to such as being able to hide in plain sight, being immoral, and being immature that were told to the public during the Cold War (Friedman). The smearing of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s credibility shows those parallels / similarities that were made between homosexuals and anticommunists by looking at the relationship between him and his aides. 

McCarthy’s political public image was very important to him as it helped him gain political office over his competition, since he was just a humble outsider that had a background in the military (Friedman). This public image helped him gain a reputation as not only an outsider to D.C politics, but also as someone who wasn’t entangled with the social elites already within the capital (Friedman). While that doesn’t necessarily connect McCarthy to either homophobia or anticommunist activities, it did play a part in why he got suspected of both. A main reason he was first suspected as a homosexual is because he had two main male aides that helped him with his political endeavors. Both of the male aides were from elite backgrounds or had connections to them, which contrasted to McCarthy’s humble origins and not interacting with the elites in politics (Friedman). McCarthy didn’t really have much of a problem in the eyes of the public with having two male aides, but that changed when the two sides went abroad for some work that McCarthy wanted them to do, and they acted like immature honeymooners, which is too close for two men to be, but also unprofessional (Friedman). The two aides would later cause more issues when one was fighting for more privilege to be given to the other side, while McCarthy did nothing to really stop him. Despite those events, the most damaging one to the political power of McCarthy was when people suspected that he was homosexual along with the other two aides, since it looked like McCarthy was at the whims of one of the aides, which was accentuated by a photo of McCarthy’s aide whispering into his ear (Friedman). That comparison led to the political elites and others both within and outside the capital to show how McCarthy was unmanly, since he allowed for another man to hold dominion over him along with the fact that he was weak to the desires of others and himself, which connects to views of anticommunism (Friedman).

While I personally don’t interact much with politics, I still believe that sexual innuendos are still used in politics today. This is because there still is a lingering viewpoint about what are okay manners and jobs for men and women to hold and what they should or shouldn’t say. I would also say that there still is a big point made about how ‘manly’ a politician is if they are going against another male by showing off their exploits or career choices. Along with that, I believe it has also moved to female politicians since historically, it was a job held by men, so they have to prove that they can handle the job and political power.